Ms. Lisa MacLeod: My question is for the Premier. Tomorrow the auditor will release his report on consulting contracts at hospitals and local health integration networks, which will shed new light on the pattern of waste at eHealth and the LHINs. The Ontario PC priority is putting money back into front-line health care, but the Premier's priority is to make Ontario patients pay $10,000 for Kathy Durst, the chair of the Waterloo Wellington LHIN, to take management courses at McMaster. Premier, why are Ontario families paying for your hand-picked Liberal appointee to take courses at university when the money should be spent on front-line health care?

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Stop the clock. There are a number of ministers who are commenting while somebody is asking a question, and it's important for the Speaker to be able to hear that question. I'd just like to remind those ministers to be respectful of the questioner.

Premier?

Hon. Dalton McGuinty: To the Minister of Health.

Hon. Deborah Matthews: It seems that the opposition continues to attack the LHINs. They continue to attack community members having a voice in the planning of their health care system.

I can tell you that we are committed to strengthening the LHINs. The LHINs are playing a very important function in our health care planning. They are, for the first time ever, responsible for the integration of health care. We are seeing tremendous results from the work that the LHINs are doing, especially when it comes to reducing, for example, alternate level of care patients-ALC patients-who are in hospital, who actually would be better served at home or outside of the hospital. The LHINs are doing that work.

I know the opposition thinks there should be no planning whatsoever for the over $20 billion that is administered by the LHINs. I simply disagree with that.

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Supplementary?

Ms. Lisa MacLeod: Back to the Premier. I know that the Premier will be visiting Waterloo later this afternoon, and media and families in that community are looking for an explanation from the Premier of Ontario. During the period that Kathy Durst attended accountability and change sessions, Durst also billed the Ontario taxpayer and patients for her $350 per diem. Ontario PC caucus researchers also uncovered information that revealed that the same chair of the Waterloo Wellington LHIN billed Ontario patients $81,000 in per diems, even though the job was posted as part-time to the Ontario public. She doesn't see a single patient, nor does she provide any front-line care, so why has the Premier put his bloated health bureaucracy ahead of Ontario families and Ontario patients?

Hon. Deborah Matthews: I have to say, when it comes to health care the opposition simply does not get it. What they need to understand is that the sustainability of our health care system-